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Robert C Howard Aug 2013
Our footsteps echo through ancient halls,
                where here is everywhere
        and every time is now.

Caesar’s twin-edged conquests are our own
                as is Brutus’s fickle knife
        and Marc Anthony’s cunning speech.

Plague steals across our Europe
                like a remorseless highwayman -
        rosies all ringed and falling down.

We wait in Wien's Kärntnertor theater
                for Schiller’s An die Freude    
        to shine anew in Beethoven’s score

and are ushered in at Menlo Park
                where Edison's tungsten faintly glows.
        Tomorrow will bring sun to the night.

There's Jonas Salk at his microscope.
                One more test will crack the code
        to banish polio's scourge.

But nature’s caprice strews logs on our roads.
                We are dashed by a Tsunami’s rage.
        Katrina’s torrents have swallowed our homes.

Prides of warriors wade rivers of blood  
                and Darfur bullets tear into our chests.
        Nuclear Toys ‘R Us shelves are fully stocked.

We are the heirs of each triumph and treachery.
                We grasp the keys to tomorrow.
        What have we done? What must we do?
Robert C Howard Aug 2013
Before first life -
      a sea of primal broth.

Before the child -
      a seeded egg shook and split.

Before men spoke -
      only utterance and signs.

Before bridled fire -
      a raw and frigid world.

Before awareness
    subsistence sufficed.

With reflection
      came experience recalled.

Myriad thresholds
      reached and transcended.

From every this, something else
      otherwise and unexpected.

How strange that we
      move our pens to essence.

Stranger still
      that we are here at all.

*June,  2007
This poem is included in my book, Unity Tree available at Amazon.com in both print and Kindle formats.
Robert C Howard Aug 2013
Sacagawea's Capture*

As I strolled the Knife River trail
a dust cloud swirled and fell
and earth lodges appeared by the score
extending from the path to the river banks.

Hidatsa women sang at their chores,
        husking corn -
              beading moccasins -
                     scraping a buffalo hide.

A band of hunters dismounted
and released their ropes -
dropping two deer and an elk
by the hanging rack.

Triumphal shouts from the river
turned all heads to the shore
where warriors, returned
from Shoshone fields,
lashed up canoes and dragged
their human spoils up the rise.

Several squaws reached out
from the gathering crowd
seizing two of the squirming children.

A Shoshone girl with terror in her eyes
cringed as a warrior raised his arm.
"No, tell your Hidatsa name!"
Sobbing she choked through broken tears,
"My name is Sacagawea."

I bolted to breach the walls of time
to face death in her defense
but a new whirling cloud intervened.

When the dust fell away
all the lodges had vanished
with all the Hidatsa villagers.

Kneeling down to the Dakota grass,
I caressed a circular hollow
etched deeply in the silent earth.



August 6, 2010
Lewis and Clark wintered in the Mandan Villages along the Missouri River in present day North Dakota in 1804.  The Knife River flows into the Missouri River just a couple of miles downstream. Several tribes lived together for their mutual security.  The scene in this poem happened a few years earlier.   The French Canadian trapper, Toussant Charboneau, either bought Sacagawea or won her in a card game.  She was pregnant when the Corps of Discovery arrived and Lewis helped "midwife" the birth of her son, Jean Baptiste Charboneau.

When Lewis and Clark found out she was Shoshone they hired her and Charboneau to help negotiate for horses to cross the Rockies.  As luck would have it, the Shoshone Chief that had the authority turned out to be Sacagawea's brother or cousin (the Shoshone language used the same word to define both relations).  Sacagawea's presence with the Corps of Discovery probably saved the expedition from annihilation on several occasions.

The Hidatsa's at Knife river and in other communities lived in large circular houses framed out in tree lumber. The open circles inside were hollowed out into crater-like depressions. Today, the hollows from their houses dot the landscape like the surface of a golf ball.

Knife River is one of the most moving sites I have ever seen or expect to see - ever!!
Robert C Howard Aug 2013
The 64 squares on a chessboard
match the tally of my years –
some passed in red,
others in black -
another day, another game.

Mostly I prefer to play
the knight with angled junkets
cutting a dashing profile
like the head of his noble steed
(though many moves, alas,
resemble another part of the horse) .

Of course it is rather grand
to be monarch for a day
calling the shots
from a gilded throne
in a rustic medieval castle

but a mere half turn of the wheel
busts me down to humble pawn -
moving one square at a time -
rendering to Caesar his due.

Chess may not be my game of choice
but there isn’t any other
and on the whole it’s not so bad
save for that infernal timer!

*December, 2007
Robert C Howard Aug 2013
An orange-rose halo suffused
    the eastern horizon
like the birth of a fresh new world.

Our celestial furnace, still veiled
    beyond the eastern edge,
lent its glow to the bright silver disk
    still hovering in the western sky.

In the chill still of an autumn morn
    where yesterday greets tomorrow,
a sermon wrought of science and spirit
    whispered through the aether,

        "All is hope.
            All is promise.
                All is awakening,"
Robert C Howard Aug 2013
What if Escher had it right
and "within" is really "without,"
and stairs turn inside out
and "up" is just the same as "down?"

Imagine if you will
a "topsy-turvy" sort of place
(or is that "turvy-topsy")
where time marches retrograde
and all effects precede their causes.

I know, I know, your life is busy
but can't you drop it all for half a day
and step out with me
(with Escher at our side)?
We'll cross the edge of time and space
where an alternate universe or two
is just a dream away.

Hurry up now (or then), let's go!
We have to get back
before the sun ascends in the west!
Robert C Howard Aug 2013
In the calm still moonlit night
      she silently wove a silken tapestry -
          spinnerets spewing slender strands
      light as air but strong as Kevlar.

A silvery armature spanned the trail
    clinging to trunks and branches.
          Rappelling down from its pinnacle,
      she fixed radii to her deadly wheel.

Spiraling in from the outer ring
      she knitted her way to the center
          to await the tell-tale shudder
    of a fly or moth flown into her snare.

She took no note of the hiker
      paused alone on the trail -
          transfixed by the dew laden spiral
    shimmering in the rose-glow sun.

It mattered not to the spider
      that a man would find her work pleasing
          and it mattered not to the man
    that the web was not woven for art.
Included in Unity Tree - Collected poems
pub. CreateSpace - Amazon.com
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